Transcending tragedy
Relearning how to give and get love after the death of a child
If you are a parent at all prone to catastrophizing (and really, what parent isn’t?), be wary of Billie Livingston’s latest novel; be wary, but persist, because although you will be deeply discomfited, you will also be amply rewarded.
The catalyst for the action in The Crooked Heart of Mercy is the accidental death of a 2-year-old child, Frankie, but the most important developments here take place on an emotional level. The story is told in alternating chapters, from two points of view. The first is Ben, the child’s father, who we meet in a psychiatric hospital, trying and failing to articulate his pain to a Dr. Lambert: “On a scale of one to blinding, where does wrecked fall?” And the second is Maggie, Frankie’s mother, who is keeping it together — but barely — working as a helpmate to an elderly woman named Lucy with an interest in the Spiritualist movement.
Neither Ben nor Maggie have had it easy, and Livingston details their respective past wounds in very readable, unfancy prose, bringing to life some dysfunctional family dynamics and working-class challenges with plain-spoken grace. The dialogue, especially during heated confrontations between husband and wife or siblings, is gritty and grounded, and the fraught silences between broken men is powerfully evoked. The author also gives us a very clear sense of these characters’ physical existences; for example, the sheer amount of elbow grease required to clean the stink and filth out of an aging alcoholic’s long-neglected apartment.
It takes great courage as a writer to articulate the aftermath of heartrending loss; Livingston recognizes that great sorrow often recalls and exacerbates previous hurts. Maggie’s brother (and Frankie’s namesake) Francis is an ordained priest who struggles with his own demons, and Ben’s younger brother Cola is operating on the wrong side of the law; it seems improbable that this ragtag group will ever access anything approaching the mercy of the title. But that mercy is often a function of compassion for both others and the self is evident in the novel’s denouement, an ending less about happiness than a kind of welcome reprieve.
Most importantly, by taking often overused and amorphous terms such as ‘forgiveness’ and ‘spirituality’ and bringing them down to Earth, Livingston allows Ben and Maggie to come to a stumbling understanding of what it means to survive day-to-day, transcend terrible trauma, and to eventually regain the capacity to give and receive love.